  Section XII. Force Structure Options If hardware is tertiary, why not just stick with what the U.S. military already has? The problem with this alternative is that it requires spending at Cold War levels on Cold War equipment, but without a Cold War threat. It also turns leaders’ attention away from creating effective forces and towards lobbying for hardware programs.
The issue is whether the US could carry out a maneuver warfare strategy by using fewer resources, do it better, and in the process avoid some of the problems caused by continuing an enormously large defense establishment. In war or in business , implementing lean-production forces any organization to eliminate waste and reduce costs while simultaneously improving quality, efficiency and time to market. Enterprises that successfully employ lean production routinely take market share from those who do not, and, because of their lower costs, generally post far better bottom lines. Improving mutual trust is a key element in implementing lean production, and that coincidentally, the people who invented lean manufacturing were careful students of Sun Tzu.
To see the power of Sun Tzu’s strategy applied to business, one need only note that between 1980 and 1990, General Motors’ share of the U.S. market declined from 52 percent to less than 30 percent, largely driven down by the inroads of Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. To summarize the guidelines for constructing a Sun Tzu / Boyd force following the discussion above: 1. Military force is a key component of furthering national interests, but it is not the only component or in many cases even the primary one.
It should always be used sparingly. 2. Military forces, when they are used, should obey Sun Tzu’s dictum: end the conflict in the quickest possible time with the least possible damage to either side. 3. Military operations against conventional forces, for example, to assist an ally under conventional attack, must be conducted as maneuver warfare. That implies a substantial capacity to play the cheng / chi game against any potential opponent. 4. Military operations in 4GW must be carefully measured so that, by their very success, they do not strengthen the hands of opponents.
It truly is not necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. Maneuver warfare provides a framework for implementing such a force and history suggests that there are some characteristics of a force that can reinforce its capabilities for maneuver warfare in the post-Cold War era. The following table is from a recent book on maneuver warfare by experts on the subject from all four armed services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (reflecting their personal views, not official policy): 1. Increased focus on littorals (regions within a hundred miles of the sea), where most of the world's people, wealth, commerce, instabilities, and U.S. interests are concentrated.
2.
Decreased need for large standing land and air forces, and an enhanced role for reserve forces.
3.
Decreased need for heavy naval forces configured for global war at sea and heavy bombing forces, with a concurrent shift to maintaining control of littoral regions in support of interventions.
4.
The need for intervention and extraction capabilities to protect lives, property, commerce, and other interests, with an emphasis on high-speed lighter forces configured for autonomous operations in hostile regions.
5. The rise of fourth-generation warfare , resulting in an increased need for irregular war-fighting skills/capabilities in close-quarters combat and small-unit operations among state/non-state actors. Characteristic of this are the following: a. Decreased reliance on firepower/attrition in ground warfare. b. Decreased reliance on deep-strike/interdiction/strategic bombardment of "infrastructure" in air warfare. c. Increased reliance on fast-transient littoral penetration operations, info-war operations, Special Forces operations, political-military operations, counter-drug/ antiterrorist/ antinuclear operations, and increased occurrences of urban/suburban combat.
d. Increased resource constraints resulting in internal competition for resources. With this in mind, let’s construct an alternative defense capability. Neither Boyd nor Sun Tzu ever built such a force, so the recommendations are merely speculations by Chester and his group of researchers.. The other caveat is that if Chester’s recommendations are successful, the force represented below will satisfy the requirements of maneuver warfare, but that is not to suggest that it is the only force that will do so, or even the best that could ultimately be attained by continuing to experiment and select. 
